


womb to tomb

by callunavulgari



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fanmix, Ficmix, M/M, Series Spoilers, Steve Rogers: The Bisexual America Deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4703921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>womb to tomb, sweetheart. i loved you first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	womb to tomb

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Long Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799623) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 
  * Inspired by [Not Easily Conquered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289208) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 
  * Inspired by [The Thirteen Letters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2689091) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 



> So, I actually wanted to do a mix for this fic that tracked the music that was popular in each period. But uh, the first song that I really wanted was Samson, almost immediately after I read that line. So I just kind of went for it. Seriously, read the fic first. One, because the fic is absolutely amazing and you need to put it in your eyeballs right this second. And two, because I have snippets from the story that corresponds with each song, and they get pretty spoilery. So yes, go read the best fic that I've read in the last decade. Click on the listen button, read while you listen, but seriously, don't scroll down to the tracklist just yet.

## 

 

## “Womb to tomb, sweetheart. I loved you first.”

for the thirteen lost letters of Bucky Barnes. 

A mix for the [Not Easily Conquered series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/115516) by DropDeadDreams. Read it. Treasure it. Spoilers for the fic are under the cut, so tread carefully.

 **samson** — regina spektor //  **these, our bodies, possessed by light**  — max richter | richard siken //  **take me to church**  — hozier //  **survive**  — chelsea wolfe //  **i walk the line**  — halsey // **touched**  — v.a.s.t. //  **home**  — american authors //  **who will save you now**  — les friction //  **dead in the water**  — ellie goulding //  **i will follow you into the dark**  — lainey darleeng //  **death is only a door**  — tom tykwer //  **this is not the end**  — fieldwork //  **still**  — daughter //  **words**  — skylar grey //  **king**  — lauren aquilina //  **you know where to find me**  — imogen heap //  **i’d love to change the world**  — jetta //  **after the fall**  — chelsea wolfe //  **back from the dead**  — anne dudley //  **white flag**  — the romanovs //  **once upon a dream**  — lana del rey //  **the human emotion**  — tragedy machine //  **haunting**  — halsey //  **first breath after coma**  — explosions in the sky //  **thistle & weeds** — mumford & sons //  **glass heart hymn**  — paper route //  **one of us**  — ivan torrent // **black**  — kari kimmel //  **world on fire**  — les friction // **it will come back**  — hozier // **instructions for a bad day**  — nomorad //  **hoppipola**  — sigur ros //  **the call**  — regina spektor // 

[listen ](https://8tracks.com/callunavulgari/womb-to-tomb)

**i.**  I won’t be in the history books; that’s for you. But I loved you first. As long as they get that right, I don’t care what they say.   
  
**samson || regina spektor**  
_you are my sweetest downfall  
i loved you first, i loved you first  
beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth  
i have to go, I have to go_

 _  
_  
  
**ii.**  I didn’t come to war for you and I didn’t fight to keep it away. The way I got out here was cowardly. But the more I fought the more I told myself my story. It’s so much easier when you’re telling yourself a story. Because the truth is that we’re not here for God or for our nation or even for our families or our sweethearts. Maybe we think so at first or we convince ourselves afterwards, which is easy enough to do when you’re humping through the muck or trying not to catch hypothermia in the forest. In the field it’s a different story. Suddenly all the pretty pictures you’ve painted fade away and all that’s left is the ugly gore and the sweat. It turns out that there’s not one God damn thing that’s glorious about death. You’re not out here for them. You’re out here because that’s just the way the chips fell.  
  
I told you, you heard me: I told you never to follow me into Hell. Now I’m not vain enough to think that’s why you’re out here now — if there’s any person in what’s left of this God forsaken planet who’s part of a bigger picture, it’d be you. But I’ll keep saying it until it sticks. You got nothing to prove. I’m not worth much, I damn well know that, but I’ll ask you anyway: Stay for me. If you leave me alone in this world I’ll turn into something terrible. I’ll turn into the nasty creature that’s growing inside me. This war, it’ll swallow me whole.

 **these, our bodies, possessed by light || max richter | richard siken**  
_there's a niche in his chest  
where a heart would fit perfectly   
and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place —  
well then, game over.  
you wonder what he's thinking when he shivers like that.  
what can you tell me,   
what could you possibly  
tell me? _

**iii.**  The closest I’ve ever been to the Garden of Eden is the genesis on the battlefield when the shrapnel’s still falling like hail on a tin roof. You look at me with those blue eyes all hot and electric in your face, blood on your cheek, soot smudged over your nose. Bone of my bones. Were you taken from my rib? You must have been, or maybe I was made from yours. And God damn, I want it. I want back inside you. I want you now, same as I wanted you before, prettier than hell even with a bloodied nose and split knuckles. Don’t care you were smaller. Liked it, even — same as I like you this way too. You make me hungry. You understand? You make me hungry. That mouth pink like spun sugar, though it doesn’t stop you from talking fit to cut anyone down to bits with your angry words. A spitfire since you learned how to speak, and I’ll tell you something, it’s hell to love a fighter.  
  
Anyway, Jesus — I shouldn’t even be thinking it, much less writing it down. I used to love you so sweet, the way kids love, the way I was supposed to. Then it turned greedy and true. If there’s any Heaven that’s fit for me it’d be all your pale skin under my hands for the rest of eternity. I wouldn’t need anything else. Not food or drink or sleep. Just my hands on you and your sweet love-sounds.  
  
**take me to church** **|| hozier**  
_take me to church  
i'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies  
i'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife  
offer me that deathless death  
good god, let me give you my life_

 _  
_  
  
**iv.**  I see you worrying your daddy's rosary at night, the poor battered old thing, and I wonder how you can still pray. I went to confession a hundred times until I gave up on it, because no matter how many Hail Marys I recited in the dark with you laying next to me, it didn’t stop. Sister Catherine would spit on me because I don’t have much need for God out here, but I’m glad you do. I’m real glad one of us does. But you keep giving me those big sad eyes of yours, like I’m breakin your heart when I try to explain it to you, and so I’ll give it another go, just one last try, even if you’ll never know about it   
  
Ave Maria, gratia plena, get him out of this war, and if you’ve gotta take someone then take me, because I’ve got nothing real to go home to but he’s got a girl now and I can see the hope written all over his face when he sees her. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, pray for us sinners, but don’t spend too much time on my immortal soul, because not even divine intervention can help me now. I know when to walk away from a fight and trying my damnedest not to need him was a losing battle.  
  
**survive || chelsea wolfe**  
_we could survive  
all the sinners and the saints  
move in the same direction  
they walk in place  
until the end_

  
  
  
**v.**   It’s like this. You were the best at mythology when we were kids, and I remember one day we were reading about Icarus. And you remember this, I know you do, but I’m going to tell you the story again anyway. Icarus made wings out of wax to escape a prison. But when he was outside for the first time in years there was the sun hanging up in the sky above him and he thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He flew closer and closer and his wings started to melt, but he didn’t give a good goddamn. He kept flying up until he couldn’t fly anymore, and his eyes were probably burning, and his skin was probably burning, but still he didn’t care. And then his wings melted all the way and he fell miles and miles into the ocean and brained himself on a rock, that poor stupid asshole. And I’ll tell you what: I’m no better. I’m no fucking better.

 **i walk the line || halsey**  
_i find it very, very easy to be true  
i find myself alone when each day is through  
yes, i'll admit that i'm a fool for you  
because you're mine, i walk the line_

 _  
_  
  
  
**vi.**  What do you say, after this I’ll take you someplace nice, and I’m not talking about one of the dance halls you hate so bad either. It’s so God damn cold in Brooklyn your lungs make a louder racket than our broken radiator and Mister Eli’s mangy cat combined, and then here mud sucks at our shoes and gets under my fingernails and I swear to God that I haven’t felt warm in half a year. Neither have you, no matter how hard you pretend otherwise.  
  
So if we ever get out of this frozen wet hell we’re going out to the Grand Canyon. I tell you, I dream of the Grand Canyon. We’ll be there at night, just you and me, and throw rocks off the edge to hear them make land a thousand miles down, thunking like fat little raindrops into a puddle. That’s all I want to do anymore. Lay on the baked red ground next to you until my bones heat up. Warm again. Warm again with no more of that thick dried blood smell in my nose, just you, clean like your soap. You’d be heaven for anyone, but you’re especially heaven for a sinner like me.   
  
**touched || v.a.s.t.**  
_i'll never find someone quite like you again_  
_i'll never find someone quite like you again_  
  
_i looked into your eyes and saw_  
_a world that does not exist_  
_i looked into your eyes_  
_and saw a world i wish i was in_

  
  
**vii.**   Bucky looks up to see him chewing at his stub of a pencil for a minute. He knows that this is true: Steve is a Fulton Landing boy through and through, and the thought of him living anywhere but their worn slice of Brooklyn is unimaginable. The horns honking, and the murky city air, and the godawful smell of the neighbors cooking — the socialists, the artist types: Steve belongs there at dusk, with his pale feet hanging off the fire escape. Bucky looks at Steve and misses home, but only partway. Steve is in front of him, after all. He can’t miss home that much. Most of home is right here.

 **home || american authors**  
_i'm not trying to stop a hurricane  
i'm not trying to shake the ground below  
i'm just trying to find a way to make it back home  
_  
  
  
**viii.**   THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL, and on the other side of the knife — Hitler youth, with eyes blue as the Connecticut sky — Bucky carves, FOR I AM THE EVILEST MOTHERFUCKER IN THE VALLEY.   
  
**who will save you now || les friction**  
_i won’t let it go  
i’ll fight til the end  
and then you will know  
  
who will save you now  
tell the world i’ll survive  
_  
  
  
**ix.**  You know, after the table, when they took me in to question me about what happened, they gave me an out. They told me they’d discharge me and I could go home — I’m serious. Due to psychological injury, they said. Do you understand that? I think about it every God damn day of my life. I could have gone home. I could be home right now. I could be sitting in our ugly little shoebox trying to get the radiator to work. I could be at the fish market, or even taking a girl on a date. But God fucking save me, I couldn’t do it. My one dream came true but I didn’t take it because I didn’t want to watch you leave. Not quite yet. I’m selfish and I want to hang on until I can’t anymore.  
  
The God’s honest truth is that I ain’t ever gonna love again. She’s your true north. I know what that means, because you’re mine. 

 **dead in the water || ellie goulding**  
_if i was not myself_  
_and you were someone else_  
_i'd say so much to you_  
_and i would tell the truth_  
_'cause i can hardly breathe_  
  
_when your hands let go of me_  
_the ice is thinning out_  
_and my feet brace themselves_  
  
  
  
**x.**   Never told another soul this, and I guess I never will, but I think of that orange, that one evening, every single time when I’m sure I’m about to snuff it for real. Thought about it in my first firefight and thought about it when the Germans stuck me full of needles and sliced up the soles of my feet. And when I was shot the other day and so sure it was over — good-bye, motherfuckers, I’m finally going back home — I wasn’t all that scared. In that one minute it was fine — everything was alright. I bought an orange. You smiled at me. And Jesus Christ, it was fantastic.

 **i will follow you into the dark || lainey darleeng**  
_if heaven and hell decide  
that they both are satisfied  
illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs  
if there's no one beside you  
when your soul embarks  
then i'll follow you into the dark  
_

  
  
  
**xi.**   I remember maybe third day of Catechism when Sister Catherine said that each and every one of us are sinners and there wasn’t nothing to be done for it. And I believe it of me, hell yes I do — I’m a killer, stone cold. Some people are good at math and some people are good at art, but me, I’m good at shooting, and it scares me right to the bone the things I’d do for you. When they turn me away from the pearly gates I imagine they’ll give me a list full of the names of the Germans I killed for you and won’t look twice at what I think about doing every time I curl up around you at night, sayin it’s just to keep warm. Because it’s fine and all to kill for your country, I think, but not quite the same when you’re killing for just one person in particular.  
  
And besides, I’ve got a whole laundry list of other sins, past even those. I’m a liar and a coward, and once I got the draft I burned the letter so that you’d never find it. I’m so God damn afraid to die, but it’s not for me. It’s because I can’t leave you alone in a world as ugly as this one. Somehow you don’t know it, but there’s no justice here, not anymore. All the word about the death camps. The shit Morita put up with before he shipped out. You took a knife to the neck last year and still you can’t see it, don’t understand that Hell isn’t some place underneath us, all filled up with fire and brimstone. Hell is right here, and I’ve been damned for a long time.  
  
**death is only a door || cloud atlas**  
_*instrumental*_  
  
  
  
  
**xii.**   There are a bunch of stories in this world. I know this because I slept through every single one of them in school with you snoring away right beside me. Long stories, short stories, ghost stories. Sad stories and romance stories, parables, tall tales, and even the stories that have happy endings — And let me tell you, men on Mars make more sense to me than those do these days.  
  
I’m the story that’ll never get told, but that doesn’t much bother me. They’ll remember you which is as it should be. Just like me, they were caught off guard. Nobody ever saw you coming, not the army, not the country. You went and blindsided us all. And now that all the storytellers have got a hold of you, you’re gonna live forever.

 **this is not the end || fieldwork**  
_*instrumental*  
_  
  
  
  
**xiii.**   “How was work?” asks Steve. The clock in the living room ticks; Kat is at a friend’s for the night, and it is almost ten.  
  
Peggy smiles at him in an unintentionally sharp-edged way that says she has been doing something very unpleasant all day long. Steve thinks of her punching Hodges in the face a million years ago at Basic and wonders what she does now when the USSR captives mouth off during an interrogation — or what she has other people do for her.  
  
“Just fine,” Peggy says, and takes her briefcase, locked, straight upstairs.  
  
**still || daughter**  
_it's spiraling down_  
_biting words like a wolf howling_  
_hate is spitting out each others mouths_  
_but we're still sleeping like we're lovers_  
  
  
  
  
**xiv.** When Steve’s lungs rattled so bad and started him coughing so hard he went white, when his ma would sit beside his bed and pretend hard like she wasn’t thinking of calling in the priest, Steve breathed for Bucky, just for Bucky, who’d kill Steve himself if Steve left him alone without anyone to throw rocks with. When Steve would start gasping in the winter after trying to walk up the three flights of stairs to their shoebox apartment, Bucky would stop on the landing and press Steve’s thumb to the healthy pulse inside his wrist and sway close, waiting for their heartbeats to match. When they fell asleep — at nine, at sixteen, at twenty-five and freezing cold in Allied France — they aligned like two pieces of a puzzle, so perfectly fitted together that it would take an act of God Himself to tear them apart. And it did take an act of God. It did. They ruled the world with scraped knees and no central heating and not even two dimes to rub together. Steve would raze cities to save him. He would march through miles of the blackened hell of wartime Austria all over again, a thousand times, a million, barefoot or even naked, bleeding, carrying one hundred pounds uphill like Sisyphus, just to see one last time the smile that spread across Bucky’s face when he recognized Steve as his savior. Steve knows this the way that he knows the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. With Bucky, Steve is covetous. He has seen him in his dreams a hundred times. He has wanted him for a thousand years.  
  
There is no way to say this; Steve couldn’t make his throat open enough to get the words out even if he knew how. He can only form his mouth around the simplest truth he has ever known, the truth that he has never spoken; the truth he is only just now, twenty-five years later, realizing completely. 

 **words || skylar grey**  
_it's so loud inside my head  
with words that i should have said  
and as i drown in my regrets  
i can't take back the words i never said  
_  
  
  
  
**xv.**  Steve does odd jobs for a while and keeps an eye on the news. He worries about Peggy and sends postcards to Kat. He does paint work in Pittsburgh and construction for a month in Nashville. From a motel in Little Rock Steve watches Stark put his men on the moon and is mystified by their slow and plodding steps on the grainy black and white television. Aldrin makes his speech and then plants down the American flag, as if it matters — as if, in this whole huge universe, the most important thing to do is show up the Soviets on a little rock that’s out of everyone’s jurisdiction anyway. He sketches the scene, the little men on the far-away rock in the sky, and draws Howard Stark’s face on the flag instead of the stars and stripes.  
  
When Stark has a kid a few years on Steve’s surprised, because he was sure that the space program, that was it, that was his real baby, even if it was only one of a thousand others, discarded once it was done and filed. Howard’s got no goddamn idea how to love people. All he loves are the things he creates.

 **king || lauren aquilina**  
_you're alone, you're on your own, so what?_  
_have you gone blind?_  
_have you forgotten what you have and what is yours?_  
_glass half empty, glass half full_  
_well either way you won't be going thirsty_  
_count your blessings not your flaws_  
  
  
  
**xvi.**  He spots her bending down to pick up a sign. She’s just as beautiful as she was the day they got married, or maybe even lovelier, with thick streaks of grey in her hair and that same smile on her face. Down the way, she holds up her sign. He jogs to catch up with her. They march together. She reaches down and takes his hand.  
  
“I forgot how to be uncompromising in my beliefs,” she tells him. “I thought maybe if I came here you could help me remember how.”  
  
“Okay,” says Steve, his smile huge and uncontainable. “I want to do that. Peggy, I’d love to do that.” 

 **you know where to find me || imogen heap**  
_you know where to find me  
if you think it's all over  
i can sense it a mile off  
it's no friendly hello  
you could be screaming drunk  
well i've got my bad days too  
i'm gonna be here for you  
be still with me  
_  
  
  
  
**xvii.** “I didn’t know those letters existed,” he repeats, “And if I had — if I had, my life would have probably been a whole lot different. For one, I wouldn’t have been so scared of the way I felt about Buck. I didn’t know it, not for a long time, but I loved him. And don’t — look, don’t misquote me, because I mean that. I was in love with him. I was in love with James Barnes. I’ve been in love with him for as long as I can remember.  
  
“I may not look it,” Steve continues, quiet now, “But I’m an old man. All the guys I fought with are dead, but I’m still here, looking about as old as my grandkids do. I see no reason to hide from it anymore, and I’ve had decades to figure myself out. I’m telling you in the hopes that I can help anyone who’s felt as scared or wrong or prosecuted as Bucky and I did. So here it is: I’m bisexual. My wife and I are still happy as anything to be together. I love her to this day, and I’ll always love her, the same as I’ll always love Bucky.”  
  
**i’d love to change the world || jetta**  
_i'd love to change the world_  
_but i don't know what to do_  
_so i'll leave it up to you_  
  
  
  
  
**xviii.**  She cups her strong withered hands around his face. She does look the same as the day they met: despite what the years have done to her, despite the lies she has had to tell, the people she has hurt, the deaths she has seen, her eyes are the same reliable, steady brown. He loves her, no buts. He didn’t lie. Nothing can stop him from it, not even now. It burns in him, the same way he will burn until the day he sees Bucky’s face again. And he will. Steve won’t rest, not until he finds him. Wait for me, he begs Buck. Whatever hell you’re in now, hold on, just a little longer, just for me.  
  
Wait for me. I’ll come for you. I always will.  
  
“I’ll move Heaven,” Steve promises, intently. “And if that fails, I’ll raise Hell. But I’ll make this right, Peggy. I’ll bring him home.” 

 **after the fall || chelsea wolfe**  
_nothing will keep us apart_  
_i know that you'll find me there_  
_after the fall_  
_i know that you're waiting_  
_ready to run_  
_chasing the sun_  
_i can't wake up_  
_scream and run_  
_don't let them win_  
  
  
  
  
**xix.**  EMPFÄNGER : ████ █████████  
  
ABSENDER:  Dr █████ ████  
  
AKTION: INTELSTATUS:   
  
UNVOLLENDET              APRIL 1944  
                                     LUXEMBOURG  
  
 THEMA: Der Unteroffizier muß lebend gefasst und zurückerlangt werden zwecks weiterer Untersuchungen. Falls das Versuchsobjekt nicht in deutschen Besitz gebracht wird, werden weitere Maßnahmen ergriffen. Eine Falle ist möglicherweise nötig.  
  
(“The Sergeant must be captured alive and reclaimed for purposes of additional testing. If the subject is not acquired, further measures will be taken. A trap may be necessary yet.”)   
  
—Later in the snow a soldier opens his eyes.

 **back from the dead || anne dudley**  
_*instrumental*  
_  
  
  
  
**xx.**  “Bucky,” Steve repeats. His heart is stopped in his chest. The sightless goggles of 1954 stare back down at him. The Soldier’s hair, long and lank, brushes Steve’s face. Steve reaches up. The Soldier doesn’t move. Steve pulls off the visor. The eyes he finds are blue-grey, and wild, and huge. Steve hasn’t forgotten their exact color. He’d been afraid for a while that he had. The dark eyebrows are drawn. Steve feels his heart inside of his chest the way he’s felt stab wounds. This is Bucky, looking back at him, here. It’s been sixty-four years. His body is cold. His body is a weapon. They’re both weapons; it doesn’t matter. What matters are his eyes. Bucky is afraid. He’s terrified.  
  
Steve only knows one word. “Bucky.”  
  
But suddenly, inexplicably, his face is wiped clean. The Soldier grabs him by the lapels of Steve’s jacket and slams his head into the ground. In the second before unconsciousness, Steve hears it: “Хайль Ги—“  
  
**white flag || the romanovs**  
_you and i are hourglasses_  
_just you and me_  
_time erupts but has no pity_  
_and like lava i wish our bodies could freeze_  
_maybe last lifetime you got away_  
_but you'll raise your white flag if you know what's good for you_  
  
  
  
  
**xxi.**  The piano is in tatters. Its wiry guts hang out and the ivory spine is broken. But still it plays. Bucky croons along.  _He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock — he felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop._  
  
“You should’ve gone home,” Steve says. “I never meant to leave you in the war.”  
  
“You never meant to do a lot of things,” Bucky reminds him.  
  
_There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute; intestines were a’dangling from his paratrooper suit. He was a mess, they scraped him up, they poured him from his boots — and he ain’t gonna jump no more._  There was a proper way, Buck told him once, to delivering this last refrain. Jesus Christ, how they laughed and elbowed at each other, and finally finished it off with immense dignity, harmonizing impressively:  
  
_Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die;  
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to_

 **once upon a dream || lana del rey**  
_i know you, i walked with you once upon a dream  
i know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam  
and i know it's true that visions are seldom all they see  
but if i know you, i know what you'll do  
you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream  
_  
  
  
  
**xxii.**  “You were born in 1917. You always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.” The Soldier lets go of Steve’s hair and punches him in the face with the bionic arm. He’s furious. He’s terrified. His fury and terror splits the skin of Steve’s face. “You grew up in Brooklyn.” Steve gets pistol-whipped so hard his head spins. He’s surprised he doesn’t lose any teeth to it. “When I was sick you took care of me. Maybe you don’t remember me like this; that’s okay.” Steve’s vision is blurring and he tries to smile. He says, “I used to be smaller.”  
  
Steve is backhanded again. He feels more skin high on his cheek break open and bleed, caught in the plating of the Soldier’s left hand.  
  
“You wrote me letters,” Steve chokes. “Thirteen of them.” This time when he gets hit with the gun he goes down. Metal and salt bursts in his mouth — he’s bitten through his tongue again. The Soldier is shaking, his eyes huge and terrified in his face.  
  
“You were the first person who ever loved me,” Steve gasps. He didn’t know he could hurt this bad and not die from it. He didn’t know it was possible. “And I was — Buck, I was the first person who ever loved you.”  
  
**the human emotion || tragedy machine**  
_the human emotion_  
_is a very dangerous thing_  
  
  
  
  
**xxiii.**  Here’s the truth — baby, here’s the truth. I’ve got a rootless heart. I don’t think I’m meant for loving, or at least not anymore. And I should die out here. I’m the kind of guy who’s not meant to go back. I try to imagine a life after this and it just won’t come. So forget about me, will you? If it’ll make you happy. Live glorious, eat like a king, laugh until the sun comes up, never look back. Don’t you dare look back. More than anything I want to know that you kept on. More than anything I want to know that you took on the world — everything else seems to matter less and less.

 **haunting || halsey**  
_we walk as tall as the skyline  
and we have roots like the trees  
but then your eyes start to wander  
'cause they weren't looking at me  
you weren't looking for me  
  
'cause i've done some things that i can't speak  
and i've tried to wash you away but you just won't leave  
so won't you take a breath and dive in deep  
'cause i came here so you'd come for me  
_  
  
  
**xxiv.**  “I can’t do this,” Steve confesses. He looks up at him. Those eyes: those eyes. “God save me, I can’t do this. You kill me now. You do it, Buck. You do what you have to do; I don’t give a damn if it makes me weak. If you gotta kill me, kill me. I don’t wanna live if it means you’re — I don’t wanna live without you anymore, I been doin’ it so long, I been doin’ it so long. I’m so fucking tired, Buck — Jesus, Buck, please, please, I’m so tired. I’m so tired. Just do it. Do it. Do it!”  
  
“I’m trying,” the Soldier gasps.  
  
The air is punched out of Steve’s lungs. “Buck,” he says, gasping. “Buck, I see you; I’ve always seen you, don’t you know? I see you in there, I know you, I know you better than anyone alive. I see you, I know you. I know you’re there. Believe me. Believe me, please.”  
  
**first breath after coma || explosions in the sky**  
_*instrumental*_  
  
  
  
**xxv.**   I’m finishing the job — get off my damn back. You should leave it and you know you should leave it, you stubborn fucking mule. Don’t kill yourself chasing a dead man.

 **thistle & weeds || mumford & sons**  
_spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams_  
_cause recently mine have been tearing my seams_  
_i sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind_  
_alone in the wind and the rain you left me_  
_it's getting dark darling, too dark to see_  
_And i'm on my knees, and your faith in shreds, it seems  
_  
  
  
**xxvi.**  You remember staying up late reading Dracula out loud to each other under the covers, back when your ma was still alive? And we were havin the best time, scaring ourselves like a couple of idiots, until all of a sudden a police siren started up outside and we both screamed fit to wake the people in West Virginia. Then your ma came flying down the hall with a bread knife of all things at the ready, and she made us turn out the lights. So we did, and then of course I tried to act all tough, but I slept next to you that night anyway. Funny, I guess. Turns out that you’re still my favorite hiding place. Funny, too: turns out there are scarier things in the dark than vampires.  
  
Tell you something. Tell you another secret, because this one, this one I won’t ever tell, not to God, not to a priest, and sure as hell not to you. In that base we burned the bodies in a furnace. I hadn’t eaten in days. The truth is simple. The smell made me hungry.  
  
**glass heart hymn || paper route**  
_memories as heavy as a stone_  
_i am empty_  
_in my end you are my beginning_  
  
  
  
  
**xxvii.**   “We need to start fighting for the truth. We’ve been cheated and lied to and duped and — and by all means, by all means, Anderson, we should have failed, as a country. For these last couple months we’ve lived in fear and we’ve been on the cusp of something terrible, and I think we’ve all felt that, all the American people. Somebody needs to tell the truth. Stop censoring history. Professionally, personally, I’ll say it. Nobody else is saying it, so I’ll say it. No. No, Steve Rogers shouldn’t have been indicted. Yes: I think that something is very, very wrong.”  
  
(Anderson 360. “Martha Banks: Candid Answers.” CNN. Television.)   
  
**one of us || ivan torrent**  
_*instrumental*_

  
  
  
  
**xxviii.**  “I’ll stand by it,” Steve says. “I will. You died for me once, I owe you a favor. I’m not running. I don’t want it if we have to run.”  
  
Bucky’s face does something complex and furious. “Where do I even — You’re not doing me a fucking favor,” Bucky snaps. “You know why they picked you? Easy fucking target: you’ve been chomping at the bit to fall on your own sword since the day you were born. You die on me and you might as well put me back in that chair. It’ll be the same. I’ll be the same as then. This long, and you still don’t get it, do you? I’m —,” he says, and his voice is suddenly weak, ragged. He clamps his jaw shut; he won’t say it out loud. “But you know that already, don’t you. You know. You read it all.”  
  
**black | kari kimmel**  
_far off in the distance  
somewhere you can't see  
allegiances have formed your destiny  
opposition all around  
feeding off your soul  
trying hard to swallow you whole  
and the demons all around you waiting  
for you to sell your soul  
_  
  
  
  
**xxix.**  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Peggy continues, “‘These are the times that try men’s souls. I thank God that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. Twice now we have marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. Let them call me rebel; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils were I to witness the slain of America. Tyranny,’” she says, and the massive doors of the courtroom are slammed open, boots thundering: Steve turns and hears the din: yelling, shouting, a vicious struggle. Peggy’s voice rings out above it all. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”  
  
“Listen to this,” Bucky Barnes says, and the file and the tape recorder slam and echo on Judge Williams’ bench. “Proof of conspiracy all the way to the core of this fucking government. He’s free to go.”

 **world on fire || les friction**  
_i’ll return from darkness and will save your precious skin  
i will end your suffering and let the healing light come in  
sent by forces beyond salvation  
there can be not one sensation  
world on fire with a smoking sun  
stops everything and everyone  
brace yourself for all will pay  
help is on the way  
_  
  
  
  
**xxx.**   “Yeah?” Bucky’s nose touches his before he pulls away, and then he grins and spans his hands over Steve’s hips, his eyes heavy-lidded and smug. “Well, your fault. You know better than to look at me like that. I’m like a tomcat, Rogers. Feed me once, I’ll just keep on coming back for more.”  
  
“Jesus,” Steve murmurs, laughing, and he puts his arms around Bucky’s neck.  
  
**it will come back || hozier**  
_don't let me in with with no intention to keep me  
jesus christ! don't be kind to me.  
honey don't feed me - i will come back  
  
it can't be unlearned  
i've known the warmth of your doorways  
through the cold, i'll find my way back to you  
oh please, give me mercy no more!  
it's a kindness you can't afford!  
i want you baby tonight, as sure as you're born  
_  
  
  
**xxxi.**  This story has been unbelievable and strange, but maybe this is the most unbelievable and strange part of all: I never forgot him, not really. I only told myself that I had. I forgot without forgetting at all.  
  
For decades I hid him deep within a secret part of me, and even though I lost his specifics, his nose, his brow, I somehow knew that he lived safe and far away, and that knowledge alone was my comfort. The shape he took in my mind was something special, and beyond that he was stored in incremental pieces all throughout me anyway: my teeth missed him, and so did my kneecaps, and even my angry hands. My spine knew something was wrong, too — I swear to God it felt the absent rungs. But my memory is four-dimensional and just enough elastic, which is maybe why it worked so well: why I could forget without forgetting, and why it all filtered back so quickly. Now I can tell anyone all about him; I can conjure him up straight from memory. And what a luxury it is, too — what a rich man I am — that I can think of him at all, the blue eyes, the chin, that red little mouth. If I kiss him anywhere he turns bruised and overripe and wanting, alive in my hands: and wouldn’t you like to know. His mean wit will cut you in two. But why would I tell you, of all people? Why would I tell you, when I’ve already spread myself at your feet, butterflied? Don’t read what comes next, I dare you. It’s only for him.  
  
Today I can see all the way to the truth I’ll know at the end of the world.  
  
Listen close. Listen to me when I say it in your ear. Remember it for me, just in case I ever happen to forget it again. I know this one in my spine-bones and somewhere now in the meat of my heart. It’s why the grave couldn’t keep me in, sweetheart. It’s how you even found me again at all. The fact of us is simple arithmetic. Torch me, bury me, break me: it's never going to stick. I’ll always come back from the dead for you. We belonged to each other before we ever belonged to ourselves.  
  
(Buchanan, R. “The Long Way Around: Epilogue.” Little, Brown and Company, 2013.)  
  
**instructions for a bad day || nomorad**  
_let your heart fill their news-stands,  
let them read all about it. admit to the bad days, the impossible nights.   
listen to the insights of those who have been there, but have come back.  
  
 they will tell you; you can stack misery,   
you can pack disappear,   
you can even wear your sorrow –   
but come tomorrow you must change your clothes.  
  
 everyone knows pain.   
we are not meant to carry it forever.   
we were never meant to hold it so closely,   
so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then.   
that when someone asks you how was your day,   
realize that for some of us –   
it's the only way we know how to say,   
be calm.   
loosen your grip,   
opening each palm,   
slowly now –  **let go.**  
_  
  
  
  
**xxxii.**  “I can’t believe it,” Peggy murmurs to him, and folds their hands together. “You’re so vibrant, look at you. I have so much time to think, anymore…we’re all, each of us, only passing through. And it’s been so wonderful, Steve; so wonderful to pass through with you.”  
  
“Pegs,” Steve says. The cold fury that used to live behind her eyes is so far away; she’s thawed out more than even Bucky in the sunlight of redemption, and somehow she’s more catastrophically beautiful now than she ever has been in her life.  
  
“Tell me,” she says, and closes her thin eyelids, basking: “How does it feel? How does it feel for you now?”  
  
“Remember being young?” Steve asks, and Peggy’s smile breaks over him like the dawn.  
  
**hoppipola || sigur ros**  
_*instrumental*  
_  
  
  
  
**xxxiii.**   So how long have I loved you for? Womb to tomb, sweetheart. Since before I was even here at all. I get it now, you understand. Your ma was right. It really is a stupid question.   
  
**the call || regina spektor**  
_it started out as a feeling  
which then grew into a hope  
which then turned into a quiet thought  
which then turned into a quiet word  
and then that word grew louder and louder  
'til it was a battle cry  
i'll come back when you call me  
no need to say goodbye_


End file.
